What are your first thoughts when you hear the words "tilt" and "shift" in one sentence? Let me guess. It must be something along the lines of "making big things look like miniatures" and yes, that's one of the effects that you can achieve using a tilt/shift lens. Actually all you need is the tilt, the shift part is more helpful when it comes to messing with perspective.

I've got my opinion about this effect and it's very similar to my opinion about tonemapped HDR images with all the sliders in Photomatix cranked up all the way to the right: I'm not a big fan of them. I believe these types of effects tend to get old very fast, and whatever effect you use, it will only work great if it helps you realize your artistic vision and tell the story that you want to tell with an image. If your picture can't tell a story, or if it lacks interest in terms of its composition, the majority of viewers will probably still go "oooh" and "aaaaah" but the image will get boring very soon.

Okay, enough with the soapbox. You've got to know the enemy in order to be able to fight it, so here's your first lesson: what tilt is all about.

Guess what, these lenses actually weren't designed to achieve that miniature effect at all. In fact it all started very early, when large format cameras came along. Using bellows and all, they had everything they needed to move the lens out of the optical axis (shift) or to change its angle in relation to the film plane (tilt).

But why would I want to do that if not for a cool looking miniature effect?

Let's look at tilt first, as it's the visually much more interesting effect. If you look at the focal plane, e.g. the part of an image that is in focus, it typically is parallel to the lens and parallel to the sensor. Now tilt the lens and you're changing a few things. Most notably you tilt the focal plane. Tilting the lens forward effectively tilts the focal plane forward with it (see the Scheimpflug Principle for a more detailled explanation).

A normal parallel lens produces the out-of-focus areas of an image behind and in front of the focal plane. If you tilt the focal plane forward, you also tilt the out-of-focus areas with it. These are now above and below the focal plane. And guess who loves this? Yes, landscape photographers do. It will allow them to tilt the focal plane in a way that coincides with the landscape, and as the out-of-focus parts are above and below the landscape, they virtually disappear. Everything all of sudden is in focus front to back from very close to very far, and without the need to stop down to an aperture of F64 (which in turn creates other issues). Bliss!

Of course you can use this for evil too. Or more precisely in an opposite fashion to achieve a certain effect, the "miniature effect". More about that in a soon-to-come post on this blog.

What's your opinion about the miniature effect? Do you hate it? Do you love it? Do you fake it? Let me know in the comments!